Simple Pleasures

Controlled explosions concerning pop music

Thursday, January 13, 2005

I've stuck a "new" song up as my big fat killer because it just gets stuck in my head and I like that. It's "Saturday Night" by Surfarosa (it's not a Whigfield cover), a band who got seemingly ignored by the presswho went with folks from a not dissimilar branch of the musical world, the Scissor Sisters. It seems a shame because Surfarosa's whole album, "Shanghai My Heart" is a rip-roaring smacker of an indie-poppy-dancey thing, but not mention in any end-of-year things in the press that I saw. Give it a go if you haven't already because you might well like it.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Now we all know their Pop World is great, probably the best music show on telly, at least terrestrial telly. Yet they stick it on at just gone 9am on a Sunday, and thus I may sleep over the start of it (I didn’t this morning but that took effort, oh boy it did). They do repeat it but that’s in the early hours on one night. Come on C4, Simon and Miquita deserve a bigger audience. They’re great. Perhaps you could flush down the toilet your endless repeats of the stinking disgrace of TV that is Friends (and replace it with Seinfeld, or is that too much to ask?).

I’m now watching their Chrimbo concert thingamybob (I say now but I really mean two days ago because I’m not writing this online), and it’s quite enjoyable. I really should buy the McFly album and I’m quite liking the 411 who are on at the moment. Unfortunately due to being limited to dial up for the next month or so I can’t download new stuff so I have to use TV as a heavy source of stuff. Once I get back to Uni I’ll get fully back in the swing of things and I’ll be posting here and my various message boards a lot more.

Finally, I saw another pop star in general public the other day. You may recall (actually I doubt it) that about a year ago I think I was browsing the racks in Selectadisc in Nottingham and I think the bloke next to me was Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin. I wasn’t 100% sure and didn’t want to ask him because if I was famous it’d probably piss me off that happening but it certainly looked like him. Anyway, the other day I went to the theatre in London with my cousin and her friends to see this new thing called Batboy (very odd but fairly enjoyable, at least for someone who hasn’t been to a musical for about ten years). In the lobby before I thought I spotted him and I had it confirmed after. It was the black haired white bloke from Blue, Anthony I think. I wasn’t really that star-struck because I don’t really like Blue but there he was. He’s added to the list.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

As there had to be, there was a John Peel night on BBC4 the other night. Whilst an admirable sentiment, it should have been on BBC1 or BBC2 because this was an incredibly important man who had done just about more for the BBC than anyone else and was the figurehead for so much. Anyway, he was a great man and I was lucky enough to watch it.

Featured in it was an hour and a half long show showing various performances from acts he has championed is chronological order, starting with The Floyd (presumably before Pink joined them) and up to Ash doing a cover of “Teenage Kicks” with one of the O’Neill brothers joining them. What was pleasant to see was a performance by the Delgados, a band that totally passed the mainstream media by yet I thought they were a lot better than the stuff that was plastered over the NME, Q and the Melody Maker (I’m looking in your direction Chris Martin and Kelly Jones). If they passed you by to give them a go. “The Great Eastern” is the album to get and it’s full of really rather pretty and clever indie stuff, sung by a bloke and a woman. On paper it sounds like something I’d hate but I don’t. So there.

If you need one final reason to like them then I’ll tell you that they’re ther only band I can think of named after a professional cyclist (the most ignored yet brilliant sport I know), Pedro Delgado, a Spanish fella from the eighties I think. Louis Armstrong is about the next closest I can think of. Give me some time, I may think of some more.

Friday, December 10, 2004

Never let it be said that I don’t suffer in the name of music. I have to do these stretch thingys to aid my back recovery and yesterday, being on my own in the house, I put on one of these musical video digital channels (I forget which one and anyway, we’ve only just got digital). I thought that the song names they flash in the bottom left hand corner were the upcoming ones they were going to show. Imagine my joy as I see “Missy Elliot – Get UR Freak On” flashed up. Now every right-thinking person in the world knows this is the greatest piece of music like ever so I thought I’d wait for the current song to finish. This was a lot of pain to put myself through as the song in question was “In My Place” by Coldplay. Dear god, it was awful. Why are this bunch of boring miserablists so feted by the general public? I bloody well know their place; it’s stuck on a rubbish tip to be buried underground where they can’t ever be heard again. The singer blokey must be fucking loaded, so’s his wife, why can’t they all just retire.

Of course the worst bit came at the end, which should’ve been the best bit; “Get UR Freak On” was not the next song. It was something else which I barely registered due to the aural agony I was going through. I ran upstairs and stuck something good on my stereo (Method Man I think). So in conclusion, Missy rules and Coldplay stink.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Been on two monster long journeys the length of England this weekend just gone and among the things I thought about whilst on the train (and trust me, there were a lot of things) was once again the UK Music Hall Of Fame thing on Channel 4 recently. Robbie Williams was chosen for the 90s (my choice was a toss-up between Missy and Dr. Dre) but looking at the ten nominations something struck me. They were Oasis, Nirvana, Robbie Williams, Blur, Dr. Dre, the Spice Girls, the Prodigy, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Missy.

Yes, all well and good (well actually, they’re not all good in my opinion but that’s just me) but there was one glaring omission that struck me suddenly was the one, the only, Ms. Britney Spears. It was either 1998 or 1999 when “Baby… One More Time” was released and it had such a seismic impact that her absence is questionable for that alone, but then you consider her evolution since that serious questions have to be raised. There she was, a school girl essentially with the ever-present enigma that she was a virginal sex icon. This was and is clever stuff and her image has always had a similar air to it but she has continued to become more sexualised as she’s grown up, as her forays into more RnB-type waters with the Neptunes almost dictates. All the while there’s her assertion that she was a sweet innocent virgin whilst dating a man who’s probably among the most fancied in the world. She goes beyond the music which is still great and is not only a musical icon but a cultural one too. And she’s younger than me (OK, by about two weeks but all the same). Where was she Channel 4?

Friday, December 03, 2004

Don't you love booty bass? It has to be the most self-describing genre in this beautiful world of music; there's a lot of bass and you shake you booty to the said bass. Very clever. And clever in that it's given another entry for a musical contradiction of sorts. I was listening to Disco D's "A Night At The Booty Bar" (very good by the way) and I can't remember which song it is (it's mix album so it ain't that easy to remember) but it says "Disco D, big fat pimp, dick stay hard. never go limp". Quite a clever rhyme I'm sure you'll agree but I have to say that I wouldn't boast about it if such a condiction afflicted me. The idea of never being able to get rid of an erection is a haunting one and I imagine even pimps and booty bass producers would find it inconvinient to say the least. Disco D must have found strange-fitting trousers which mask this condition should he need to.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Well it came. This morning. Twattingly brilliant. Yes, for I now have the second album from the unbelievably awesome Girls Aloud and can I say that it is fulfillingly mind-blowing. I was somewhat wary of expecting too much and I will need probably thousands of further listens but it is spankingly superb (I am starting to run out of superlatives here aren’t I? Ah well, you get the idea.). I’ve had various songs from it fizzing through my head all day as you do with most great songs. Thus it is great. Do you see? Anyway, I might write more lucidly (is that the right word) and in depth at a future date but it’ll definitely need to come with me on my weekend journeys to the dark North of England.

Dug out a CD I hadn’t listened to for ages today, not since well before my accident in May. “Clones” by The Neptunes which as you probably know is a collection of a load of their work from a couple of summers ago. Now I love the Neps, even if Pharrell seems a little over-exposed sometimes. They do rank behind Timbaland in my eyes but that’s hardly a criticism. Anyway I got to the penultimate track before I found the real gold of what is a damn good album anyway; “Pop Shit” by Dirt McGirt, which just one of the many pseudonyms of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, now sadly missed. Yes, he will be primarily remembered for his Wu-associated work and rightly so but this along with “Got Your Money” show that he couldn’t half kill it with the Neps as well as the RZA. I miss him.